Bolivia gets stoneage legal system

UPDATED: See below

It’s the ultimate in pre-cambrian law. Gaia in the courtroom. Shh. The Statutory Spirits are at work. It’s not just the right to life for amoeba, it’s the right not to have your cellular structure modified.

Looks like salad is off the menu.

So is meat, fruit, tea and coffee, and no you can’t eat moths either. Who will prosecute the next cougar which violates the constitution by chomping on a Flamingo?

Looks like 10 million people might get to subsist on organic free range eggs, and milk from consenting cows. Perhaps they can reach a trade agreement for honey with The Andean Bee Collective. But then it’s not clear the honey doesn’t have a right to exist too.

John Vidal reports from La Paz where Bolivians are living with the effects of climate change every day Link to this video

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings” and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature “to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

“It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all”, said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. “It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.”

Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m all for people keeping the wisdom of their elders alive and using it to guide their decisions:

Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said Bolivia’s traditional indigenous respect for the Pachamama was vital to prevent climate change. “Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values,” he said.

I just don’t think spiritual beliefs translate that well into a one-rule-fits-all legal cannon. And any law that is only selectively enforced is a tool for tyrants.

UPDATE: WWS points at just how useful this law is for tyrants

I think a few people understand what this is really about, from a legal point of view. It’s actually much more dangerous than most realize.

As Chris said, who can speak for the flora and fauna, since they can’t speak for themselves? Well that’s easy – the Government, of course. And who pays for litigation, since they can’t? Why those who are accused, of course, that’s only fair, right? And how much do they pay? Whatever their representative, the Government, says they should.

So this is, in real world terms, a plan to give the Government the power to compel, restrict and impoverish anyone, anywhere, in the name of beings who have no voice of their own. Violations will be crimes against not just humanity, but against Mother Earth herself.

It would have been much more honest to have simply declared Imperial Rule, with death as the punishment for any dissent. That’s what this is about – Absolute, Unchecked Power.

You see, this actually isn’t “crazy” at all – it’s much more Evil than that. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are kicking themselves in the grave for not thinking of this.

Chris Horner has made an excellent point – and who is going to defend Mother Nature from litigation, and how is MN going pay her legal team? Oh this is goping to be fun, fun, fun. It’s close to the bumper sticker we used to have in Australia some years back, “turn off the lights etc” by the mining industry.

It’s scary though because this is so unbelievably draconian. Could you imagine if it actually was implemented fully? “…processes free from human alteration”. It could mean anything!! It is a direct assult on any development of humans.

My guess is it will be used very selectively. I.e. if you know how to scratch the right backs and grease the right palms, then your project will go through with the blessing of some dude in a feather head dress, no doubt. Otherwise no kabana.

Seems these poor countries just can’t help themselves. Given an opportunity, they all elect socialists. Equal misery for all. Except for the top hogs, of course. They can’t be expected to rough it, can they?

Thankyou for briefly releasing your Climate Change Commissioner Professor Timothy Flannery as an advisor to our Government. His deep and profound knowledge of Gaia as a living, breathing organism has underpinned the science behind our recent “Law of Mother Earth” legislation. We know that his leading edge research will continue to benefit not just Australia, but all organisms that inhabit this dynamic but fragile planet.

This has nothing to do with climate change. It is about the native inhabitants getting access to mineral rights on their traditional land. They really don’t care if the global average temperature is half a degree higher, but they do care if a new mining lease kicks them out of the land where generations have grown up, and then the profits go overseas. If believing in climate change protects them from the mining companies, then these guys will happily believe in climate change, just like a talisman.

You need to read the long background to the struggle of the indigenous people of Bolivia and how it got to this.

My guess is it will be used very selectively. I.e. if you know how to scratch the right backs and grease the right palms, then your project will go through with the blessing of some dude in a feather head dress, no doubt. Otherwise no kabana.

Almost certainly… and the dude in a feather head dress will at least make sure his tribal group get something out of the deal, and try to maintain their traditional hunting rights, etc.

Yup & all the while benifiting from modern medicine, education & technology, that’ll work.

I suspect you will find that about 90% of the population of Bolivia don’t actually get those things, not because they are not available, but because they are unaffordable to very poor people with few of the skills that can trade for money in the modern world.

The primary task of virtually all Green legislation is re-establishing the feudal lord-subject legal status. For the excuse of nature protection you should be deprived of your individual owner rights. Your subject status to the landlord should be re-arranged as subject status to mother-nature-lord (protector) that is why the rights of nature are necessary to curb the right of yours.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature “to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

Hmmm.

What is a “development project”?
Would an innoculation scheme that protected all the local humans from infection by a persistent disease be a “development project”? The scheme would “affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

What is not a “development project”?
Would a beaver’s damn that floods a valley not be a “development project”? It would “affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”.

The idea is nonsense, and it is dangerous nonsense which needs to be opposed.

The life of one child is worth more than the lives of countless rats and microbes.

So you claim it’s not about what it seems to be about, it’s about something else. That’s not surprising, you’re not the only one in this thread who thinks so, except they have other ideas of what it’s really about. But if it’s only about “native inhabitants getting access to mineral rights on their traditional land”, why couldn’t they just have said so? Saying it this way, assuming you’re right, is both obscure and excessively verbose.

This is just another aspect of what is happening worldwide: The reversion to unquestioned, ancient dogma (remembered only as the loving, “sacred” truth) as a substitute for learning and dispassionate reasoning. In every case, the purveyors conveniently forget that the world has already spent millennia of trial and error to eradicate ancient religious superstitions, whose negatves far outweighed their positives and created an endless river of victims in every culture. Can’t they at least remember that “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” is but a reminder of the bloody vengeance “She” exacted with every flood, every drought, every erupting volcano? Her violence ritualized the worst as well as the best of the natural world. Raising the natural world to the status of goddess only marked that “goddess” as a capricious demon, filled with bloodlust requiring human sacrifice to appease her.

Do you really think the other 10% would grow or get more access under this legislative initiative?

I reckon Louis is on the money here. It feels like it could have been stimulated by somebody living in a country where there is enough education, health & technology ( & Paris H) to give rise to “guilt & angst”.

Some like Tel have remarked on how there is an antecedent to this law in dispossession and alienation of indigenous people from social advancement; that may be so but the real impetus is the reverence for nature which we see in the gaia concept; Flannery’s recent panegyrics about gaia and a unified consciousness are a witless attempt to enunciate it; more sophisticated versions are by Hamilton and Lovelock.

Gaia is a wickedly dumb idea; worshipping nature is like worshipping Boyle’s law or Beer’s law or any or all of the laws which describe the processes of nature. Nature is a mindless, meaningless set of processes about which humanity barely has scratched the surface in understanding and controlling. In this respect gaia is a ruse, an attempt to not only give meaning and sense to natural randomness but to also establish a false nurturing framework which both benevolently cares for humanity and is controlled by humanity; a pet god in other words.

The psychology is cognitively dissonant but also destructively infantile; it is telling that the vast majority of green voters in Australia are urbanites, people who are most dependent on the infrastructure which keeps nature at bay; they will be the first to be disinfranchised when the lights go out; so which is the dominant part of the pathology: the cognitive dissonance which prevents this understanding or the infantility which is bored, demanding and ultimately lemming like in its self-destructiveness. Until humanity realises it is in competition with nature such idiocy as this will continue.

15 Tel:
April 12th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
This has nothing to do with climate change. It is about the native inhabitants getting access to mineral rights on their traditional land.

That should be pretty straight-forward to accomplish for a non-corrupt government — just pass extraction taxes. Or, like in the US, let the native peoples control what happens on their lands; then they could make whatever agreements with the extraction companies they wanted. They could even form their own company, if they were ambitious enough. No need to invoke magic — I suspect that the government is bamboozling the ignorant populace.

“Yup & all the while benifiting from modern medicine, education & technology, that’ll work.”

I suspect you will find that about 90% of the population of Bolivia don’t actually get those things, not because they are not available, but because they are unaffordable to very poor people with few of the skills that can trade for money in the modern world.

So naturally, the solution is to make them even poorer with Socialism. The people controlling this don’t care a whit about solving any of these problems — they just want absolute power (why they are attracted to Socialism, rather than trying to actually create a viable economy). If it’s power over a desperately poor nation, well that’s OK — they can always commandeer whatever they need for themselves, and blame the nation’s poverty on Capitalists.

If the people of Bolivia are dumb enough to swallow this, then it will probably work. They can look forward to being the N. Korea of S. America.

Bolivia has roughly half of the worlds lithium deposits. Close down the mines that produce it, and a major source of an essential ingredient in the best current batteries goes with it. That will put a gigantic nail in the head of “Eco Friendly” electric vehicles….

This is peculiar and disturbing news indeed. My best mate in Uni (the last time around) is Bolivian. We both have degrees in Mineral Economics, so I imagine he will be working ex-pat right now, or maybe getting a “degree” in earth theology to stay current… As some have suggested, it is probably something to soothe and/or pay out to the indigenous population which made major strides in the last election.

As for lithium supply, this is potentially good news (unfortunately for Bolivia) for Western Australia. Lithium is just another of those natural inhabitants of the periodic table we have been blessed with.

At least Labor is staying true to their Robin Hood principle… what they fail to mention is that 100% of the tax will be passed on to households (plus a bit extra for profit margin) but only 55% of the revenue is coming back to households. So households will be out of pocket at least 45% of the tax levied. This is the argument Tony will have to make.

In this case the glass is half empty … no other rational way to look at it.

It is peculiar and IF disturbing, might just be what is needed. The rest of the world might take a few wind mills and a carbon tax but what is happening in Bolivia is going to be seen as peculiar by almost everyone else. This might just be the slap to wake people up from their Green Fog. The cold water on what is really behind “climate salvation”.

I still think people are missing the point. These people were Socialist long before climate change became all the rage. They recognise climate change as a convenient focal point to draw the attention of their new found Socialist allies in North America and Cannada.

That should be pretty straight-forward to accomplish for a non-corrupt government — just pass extraction taxes.

This is South America, they have never seen a “non-corrupt government”. Come to think of if, The present-day North American government doesn’t look a whole lot better (nor for that matter did the previous one). Corruption hurts Capitalist systems just the same as it hurts Socialist systems… in both cases the criminal classes start to assume power because they become the only ones who can operate.

Perhaps they need clean air, clean water and a steady temperature to make ‘Export Quality’ Cocaine.

Quite the opposite actually, they are attempting to start an international trade in high quality but low-concentration coca products (such as tea for example) which can be taxed and regulated and thus undercut the existing illegal drug trade that delivers low quality high-concentration products. Needless to say, the people making profits out of the existing cocaine trade don’t want to see this happen.

In the past few weeks, the Federal Government, has been under extreme pressure over it’s proposed Carbon dioxide tax.

Julia Gillard, her colleagues, and so-called climate panel, commonly known as “Flannerry’s circus,” have also been hampered by the amount of media coverage. The public rallies, protesting against the proposed tax, has also made things even more difficult, for this panic struck government.

This week, the Federal Government has leaked information, that medical research grants may be cut dramatically, causing a media uproar. The incident relating to the, “Skype vision” of two cadets having sex, has also been blown out of proportion by the government, but not the military. The subsequent Federal Government intervention, and the possibility of women gaining access to front line defence positions has become a media spectacle.

Before any of our great female members get upset with what I stated, I am only saying what the media is putting out there, I don’t personally have an opinion either way, because, this whole thing has been engineered by the Labor Party to deflect attention away from the issue which has been causing them so much damage.

If someone out there has access to “Media Monitors” data for the most talked about subject over the past few days, then I believe the CDT, will rate very low. The Labor party have been experts at this game for decades, and I’m a wake-up to their manipulative tactics.

Let’s just see if the budget does cut the grants for medical research as much as they have claimed? They normally cut it back less than they leaked, to make themselves look compassionate to us suckers. If the military don’t fight tooth and nail against the proposed changes for women in the frontline ADF positions, such as the”SAS,” then I would be very surprised.

Yes, he titled the piece “Jerk” to make sure it was noticed and in a veiled insult to said person. If you have read the previous article you will realise that Tamino is often fast and loose with his words, but then he should hardly be surprised if someone misinterprets his meaning. I never have that problem with clear communicators such as Jo. In case he decides to “moderate” my reply, here it is:

How amusing that you go off at someone for your ambiguous use of language. “Growth rate” means entirely different things to different individuals depending on their field of specialisation (or lack thereof). Given my (more recent) background in economics and finance I naturally interpret “growth rate” to mean compound growth rates, i.e. an exponential growth rate. If someone were to say to me, in an economics/finance context, that the rate of growth is increasing, I would assume that they mean a super-exponential, of if you prefer, growth in the exponential growth rate, which you are referring to as acceleration.

Your language is needlessly loose and inflammatory … hardly surprising that someone would misinterpret growth rate in the heat of the moment. When someone is trying to commuicate a message the onus is on the communicator to speak clearly … the listener cannot be expected to read your mind. What is more telling is your need to associate a reply to one individual with the title “Jerk” … the indirect insult speaks more to your state of mind than anyone else’s.

PS> It’s funny … as a gamer (I am currently mucking around in EVE because it allows me to read and blog while playing) I am reminded of 1337 ot “l33t” terminology (slang for elite). Tamino seems like someone desperate to increase their epeen. I wonder how being smug is working out for him … about as well as for Mr Schmidt I guess.

Hi Jo anne I lived there for 4 years as a kid and now live in another South American country. Usually these things ARE NEVER taken seriously… here it means nothing. Nothing will be done at all especially in Bolivia thank god

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans.

First laws? Why is there more to follow?

I guess for Bolivians its back to the Stone Age of human sacrifice, witchcraft and superstitions. By the time Bolivia pass The Law of Mother Earth all the population of Bolivia would have already broken it at some point in their lives over and over again, so what difference will another day make? Ooops I just sat on a ant or……anyone for a dead salad? Get my drift?

“It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all”, said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. “It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.”

Wrong. Earth is a beautiful, chaotic and a dangerous planet but has a wonderful way of healing itself when mother nature becomes deadly or got struck in the past by a meteorite . There is only one law mother nature obeys and that is chaos not equal rights through the control of man.

A correction is needed but what Matt suggests is also incorrect. The more correct statement is “when people stop believing in God they will find other things to believe. It would be very hard to prove what MattB believes.

Also with 50-70% of the world’s lithium deposits who can blame them for tying to prevent the kind of mining that multinationals have brought to other poor nations (you know the ones where all the profits go offshore and the country ends up with debts to development agencies).

top headline in Brisbane Times today – the AAP daily dose of misinformation. note how a poll on the “carbon tax” is inserted immediately below the headline, yet the piece has nothing to do with CAGW, but with “long-term” climate over millions of years and, even then, the conclusions may or may not be correct!

13 April: Brisbane Times: AAP: Climate change link to earthquakes
Poll: Has the Federal Government been too slow to respond to the campaign against the carbon tax?
Long-term climate change could be responsible for moving the Earth’s tectonic plates.
A team of scientists based in Australia, France and Germany has established a link between monsoons in India over the past 10 million years and the motion of the Indian plate…
“It is known that certain geologic events caused by plate motions have the ability to influence climate patterns over a period of a million years,” Dr Giampiero Iaffaldano from the Australian National University said in a statement.
“Now we know that the opposite holds as well.
“Long-term climate change, or the natural changes in climate patterns over millions of years, can modify the motion of plates in a feedback mechanism.”…http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-link-to-earthquakes-20110413-1ddaw.html

What you think stones don’t have feelings? Seriously this is anthropomorphism of the first order. This is very much involved with ancient religion and shows Bolivia, Ecuador etc., are still in that belief system. Anthropomorphism is alive and well amongst those who promote the Green religion. For instance that great defender of Gaia our own great Climate Commissioner, Guru Flannery, he says do not feel afraid, Gaia is with us doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy? In this he says “just over the past decade, Gaia is on the threshold of acquiring a brain” and elsewhere that humans will become part of a super organism by binding with Mother Earth. Mystic and rather loony thoughts but maybe Japan could sue Mother Earth for damages.

I must go now and console my pet rock it is feeling humiliated since a galah shat on it.

Gaia is a wickedly dumb idea; worshipping nature is like worshipping Boyle’s law or Beer’s law…..

The psychology is cognitively dissonant but also destructively infantile; it is telling that the vast majority of green voters in Australia are urbanites, people who are most dependent on the infrastructure which keeps nature at bay; they will be the first to be disinfranchised when the lights go out; so which is the dominant part of the pathology: the cognitive dissonance which prevents this understanding or the infantility which is bored, demanding and ultimately lemming like in its self-destructiveness. Until humanity realises it is in competition with nature such idiocy as this will continue.

Well it looks like Tamino’s open mind was closed to my comments LOL. Hardly surprising as moderation seems to be the preferred tool for warmist blog sites. Must have everyone singing from the same hymn sheet after all… even Mr Cutain, the target of the attack, was moderated according to one of the posts he got through. Tamino is laughable.

See MattB, if roles were reversed and this was a warmist site and you a skeptic, none of your posts would even be seen. Not sure how you can spin that any other way. No doubt you shall try because you can’t resist bait like that.

I love cross-posting blog posts just to see who censors and who doesn’t, and more specifically what they censor. Tamino obviously can’t handle the truth. As far as I can tell from personal experience:

Heh forgot why I originally came here… thought this would be of interest:

And Swan, in his debut essay for the Australian Fabian Society this month titled ”Keynesians in the recovery”, has sought to rewrite history entirely from the commonly accepted ”we’re all Keynesians now” to the more controversial ”Labor was Keynesian all along”.

Where does one draw the line between stupidity and insanity?
Passing laws to grant some thing the right to life!
Who will speak for the rights of the carrot, potato, lettuce and tomato. The apples, oranges and onions. The list just goes on and on.

My daughter said:
“If only all humans had those same rights.

I’d like to see these climate change pollies explain to the war orphans of places like Iraq and Afghanistan that most countries would rather spend their tax dollars on “Mother Earth” than to help them re-build some sort of life free from poverty and fear. I’m sure they’d like to have pure water and clean air too! Not to mention the right to exist.

What will it take to get these people to pull their heads out of their own backsides and do something about things that really matter!”
(A few expletives were deleted by me)

#68 is hard for me to answer Bulldust. I see plenty of dissenting opinion at warmist blogs – maybe you need to work on your delivery? I have a feeling I’m tolerated here as lets face it I’m good for business.

This is a warmist site but it is totally free of moderation and when i say totally free i mean totally free but be warned there are two or three veteran warmists who sit there with their noses pressed up against the monitor waiting for the lone unfortunate skeptic who wonders in by accident(forewarned is to be forearmed as they say).

Hi Jo anne I lived there for 4 years as a kid and now live in another South American country. Usually these things ARE NEVER taken seriously… here it means nothing. Nothing will be done at all especially in Bolivia thank god

Yes, that’s what this smells like to me. Other people smell different things from this text since it has little actual substance, but my initial reaction was that this is just feelgood verbiage for the intended audience. (But clearly not for the readers of this blog.)

Crackar… that ill considered is a good blog. It used to be a goiod source of counter-skeptic argunent lists until skeptical science took over. I just had a 5 mins look and got this gem of information “Quite frankly crakar, you are a moron.” lol;)

Ah, yeah…… Does nature know about this new relationship? Or is man just using a pick-up line? Either way, nature won’t give a hoot whether or not man thinks it has a relationship with nature. Nature just keeps doing what nature has always done (that ain’t no relationship – least, that’s what I have learned from my darling wife of more than 30 years). It is simply a man-made politico-socio-religious construct.

Maybe we can have a new public holiday in Bolivia to celebrate this non-event. Hopefully it might spread world-wide, so I get to go hunting or fishing in my SUV one extra day per year. It’s a relationship, dude!!!

Do you want to get to the harsh facts?
Everything on this planet is genetically related.
We are only here through the evolution of this planet and not the evolution of man. Our brain synapses are electrical in nature and so is lightening storms from this planet.

We pride our selves on the knowledge and being on top of the food chain, but look at our future. Does it look bright and secure for our children’s future? How many kids in our society can survive without electricity? Religion has it’s place as a guidance of morals and values but contains little else.

Bolivia… well well well… it sounds idyllic for all those warmist-alarmist who preach so much doom and gloom in the name of Co2… you know, people like Tim Flannery, David Karoly, Dr Suzuki, Al Gore…

Bolivia… this is the country that NASA’s Dr James Hansen determined the surface temperature by a process of harmogonization… using temperatures from as far away as 1,000 kilometers to determine Bolivia’s temperature! Simply amazing!

The point is that temperature is random and nature is chaotic; trending temperature is difficult enough; correlating that trend with something like CO2 is ridiculous; Koutsoyiannis offers this criteria for cause and effect such that human CO2, ACO2, causes temperature increase:

1. A occurs before B;
2. A and B are proximate in space and time;
3. There is “constant conjunction” between A and
B; that is, our experience tells us that B always
follows A.

A is CO2 and B is temperature; clearly ACO2 fails the first condition as Ken Stewart shows:

This is an affront to reality.
Far from raising the awareness and knowledge of the physical, chemical and biological systems of the world we live in, it indulges in old-world fantasy, stone-age immaturity and calculated delusion. I thought that we had, by the 21st Century evolved past the point of believing in Gods and Goddesses to make sense of the world. That the United Nations is actively pursuing this as a blueprint for more countries in the future makes me shake my head. It is frankly embarrassing. I am embarrassed that in 100 years time we will be remembered (yes WE) as the most foolish generation who ever lived.

I think a few people understand what this is really about, from a legal point of view. It’s actually much more dangerous than most realize.

As Chris said, who can speak for the flora and fauna, since they can’t speak for themselves? Well that’s easy – the Government, of course. And who pays for litigation, since they can’t? Why those who are accused, of course, that’s only fair, right? And how much do they pay? Whatever their representative, the Government, says they should.

So this is, in real world terms, a plan to give the Government the power to compel, restrict and impoverish anyone, anywhere, in the name of beings who have no voice of their own. Violations will be crimes against not just humanity, but against Mother Earth herself.

It would have been much more honest to have simply declared Imperial Rule, with death as the punishment for any dissent. That’s what this is about – Absolute, Unchecked Power.

You see, this actually isn’t “crazy” at all – it’s much more Evil than that. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are kicking themselves in the grave for not thinking of this.

wws:
April 13th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
I think a few people understand what this is really about, from a legal point of view. It’s actually much more dangerous than most realize.

wws – The people who do not see it as bad as you portray (and a good portrayal it is) are those that look to government as benevolent. It is not. It is a necessary evil. But the less of it there is, the less evil that can be perpetrated on its citizenry.

Qualification: Like all things, taken to extreme is not good. So anyone wanting to jump on me for being an anarchist, please re-read what is written and note the word “necessary”.

Tell, I can tell that you have good intentions for the Bolivian people at heart, and I can respect your desires. However, if this was a way to give indigeonous people control of tribal lands, then it is comparable to stopping prostitution by making it illegal to be female.

No, they won’t enforce it to the full extent possible. The full extent possible makes killing any living plant or animal murder, and thus bans eating. Yay death! However, the bureaucracy can enforce it arbitrarily fully, partially, or not at all. If they want you to be a criminal, you ARE a criminal. We already have that in most western tax codes which are so labrynthine that full compliance is near-impossible. However, even those pale in comparison to the scope of a law that can be interpreted to make eating dinner a felony. That sort of law is unconscionable.

If you wish justice for the people, then there are ways: have a permitting system that allows mining/drilling while restricting effluent, use contracts and taxes to ensure that your people get the money they deserve, or grant property rights to the tribes and let them decide what should be done. However, this is ridiculous.

When this many people are so vehemently against something, ya gotta think that something has merit. I can’t recall ever seeing so much blind, one-sided, indoctrinated, ignorant dogma.
You can grant a corporation legal person status, but not Nature? *head/desk*
“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to reconsider your position.” mark twain

When this many people are so vehemently against something, ya gotta think that something has merit. I can’t recall ever seeing so much blind, one-sided, indoctrinated, ignorant dogma.
You can grant a corporation legal person status, but not Nature? *head/desk*

The same number of people would be against rape and murder. Your point is?

We can/do create rules and regulations to control corporations. As part of a legal system, they are given legal status. Try these rules and regulations on the tsunami in Japan, maybe cyclone Yasi in Queensland. What’s that legistlation to control earthquakes and mudslides?
It’s only the gullible lemming Global Warming Alarmists who think they can regulate nature. Are you one of those?

Actually Baa, j guevara’s asinine comment creates a whole new perspective; he compares nature with corporate legal status, a comparison inherently stupid since corporations are human constructs, but fails to note that corporations can and are sued often; that being the case nature with legal status will also be able to be litigated through its agents such as the idiots in Bolivia or the UN or perhaps our Mr guevara. I know some people in Japan who may be interested in such proceedings against the bastardtry of nature.

You can grant a corporation legal person status, but not Nature? *head/desk*

(92)

A corporation (or any other legal entity that is not an individual person) is just a group of people acting together, grouped under a set of written agreements.

It is a way of assigning a legal status to an activity, and separating that activity from the people involved. Governments are essentially the same thing – a group of people agreeing (in this case a geographical grouping of people) to a set of rules. This legal status makes things much easier in society – it allows governments, businesses, charities and community organisations to exist longer than the lifespan of one individual, and it allows for the large capital and manpower congregation that would not be possible otherwise. If you don’t like corporations I don’t know what you’re doing using a computer and the internet.

If you honestly think that a group of inert rocks and trees is equivalent to a bunch of people acting together for a common purpose, then I’m not surprised you’re banging your head against the desk.

By all means assign rights to specific pieces of land, animals or rocks. But recognise you’re using a human construct to assign rights by humans to do humans things. Pretending that ‘nature’ has some sort of inbuilt, inherent legal status that exists outside the construct of man is truly wacky, earth-worship stuff. My dog has legal status, but if I didn’t feed him for a while, sooner or later he would try and eat me. That’s the law of nature – kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

Truly sad that young people are coming out of educational facilities with brains so soft this type of rubbish can get a foothold. You are the product of thousands of years of civilisation and traditions that have worked towards gaining control over the violence and instability of life. As soon as that has been achieved, you want to throw it all back. Spend a couple of weeks in the Bolivian jungle and see if you think insects and snakes have equal rights to you.

So I take it their doctors will stop prescribing antibiotics and their hospitals will cease using sterilised instruments. After all, those damaging microbes have the same “rights” as humans now. If they kill those bugs they’ll be committing murder.

I assume also that they will no longer sell bug-spray, or maintain hygiene standards in the preparation of food. How many people will appear before their justice system facing charges of “bug slaughter” after accidentally stepping on ants?

This is just nuts. The leaders of Bolivia are insane. There can be no other explanation.

Bolivia ! At last we have somewhere ! Somewhere for nature to take its course, an international refuge for the endangered bald-headed rock-star-pollie, the fast vanishing Leftius looniei, , the flannel-headed Fluffy Flumerry, the Gawdnose Garnots, and the green-breasted Gaian Guru. And lets not leave out Hansen horrendii and the Mann-iana Schtick bug and even the last remaining infestations of Rigorous Regulators and Pontificating Preeners. Alas we dont have any Sanctimonious climateprogrammeri left, they are all extinct now , but we’ll be able to build a model of one thats works perfectly for that environment.

I’d like to see this: Build a fence around that lot, and let Nature take its course.
(Anyone like to add any other Endangered Species to this idyllic green mountain sanctuary?

Jesus. Imagine being the ambassador to Bolivia and being introduced to Mr “Choquehuanca”. Still, I suppose that’s what diplomacy is for.

This plan is, of course, firmly in the South American tradition of kleptocracy. I think I am right in saying that Bolivia is already the poorest country on the American mainland, with only Cuba and Haiti competing for the regional wooden spoon over all. The likes of Guatemala and Honduras will just have to look at Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador to know what NOT to do to their own economies.

I’d like to know what the Bolivian idea of “mega-infrastructure” may be. My local branch of Tesco is bigger than La Paz airport. I’ve been only in the Andean part, not in the lowlands, which are reckoned to be much more economically dynamic, but it has to be said that “Bolivian” and “infrastructure” are words infrequently placed side-by-side (never mind the “mega”). Unfortunately, this sounds, anyway, like a plot by the La Paz crowd to rip off Santa Cruz, which is the only part of Bolivia where the economy has a discernible pulse; it’s the region which has been least receptive to the bonkers rule of Evo Morales and has already suffered from his seizures of natural resources. I think it is also fair to point out that Santa Cruz, way to the south of La Paz and in a part never controlled by the Incas, is pretty resistant to the Inca-obsessed culture of the north (“Pachamama” and that kind of twaddle), so there is old-fashional regional enmity involved here, too. Ecuador pulled off a similar economy-killer recently: that “legal” case against Texaco. The Moonbats, the Guardianistas and the Stalin-wannabees with Che Guevara badges will applaud this kind of stuff to the rafters, but the rest of us should fight this insanity all the way.